Reviews

Barbican Hall, London. 4th January 2005
London Evening Standard

Still haunted by the ghost of a swing legend

Shrouded in legend, the music of Glenn Miller continues to defy fashion.

The band, once the height of wartime dance-hall hip; those lightweight US-Airforce uniforms, so resented by British troops in their coarser khakis; that ill-fated flight to Paris which disappeared from radar screens - they all happened more than 60 years ago. And yet licensed Miller ghost-bands like this can still fill concert halls.

"Glenn Miller shoulda lived", quipped the jazz-loving US comic Lenny Bruce. "It's his music that shoulda died." For once Lenny got it wrong. Nostalgia alone doesn't account for this phenomenon.

Something about these smooth ensemble voicings, sweet harmonies and gentle swing continues to touch people. Bandleader Ray McVay introduced Miller's quintessential arrangement of London Bridge is Falling Down as a one-minute-15-second miniature masterpiece.

Studying his New Year's Day audience, McVay thoughtfully dedicated Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair "to all the ladies here tonight who used to have light brown hair."

A handful of white-haired octogenarians were there who might actually have danced to Miller's 1944 US Army-Airforce Band, but seated beside them were their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, tapping feet and clapping hands to classics like Tuxedo Junction, Little Brown Jug and Pennsylvania 6-5000 as if by family tradition.

Enlivened by the energy of the four Jiving Lindy Hoppers, the close-harmony Moonlight Serenaders and singers Colin Anthony (Chattanooga Choo-Choo) and Jan Messeder (I'll Never Smile Again), things reached a nostalgic climax with Moonlight Serenade and, inevitably, In The Mood.

Jack Massarik.